Around the World with Paolo Pellegrin

The Magnum photojournalist Paolo Pellegrin has documented many of this generation’s major conflicts and disasters, from wars to revolutions to tsunamis. “I am trying—as I do in all my work—to create a bridge,” he said in a recent interview. “To use photography to say something that goes beyond the surface, that vibrates, that resonates, that speaks about a form of psychological portraiture, if you will. To make a connection.”

Last winter Pellegrin’s work from Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, Romania, Afghanistan, Libya, Cuba, the United States, Mali, Egypt, Algeria, Haiti, Tunisia, and Indonesia went on exhibit at the Kunstfoyer der Versicherungskammer Bayern gallery in Germany. To accompany the show, Pellegrin and Yolanda Cuomo Design came up with an unusual catalogue, designed in only one week’s time: a five-and-a-half by seven-and-a-quarter-inch accordion book that unfolds to the length of a city block, consisting solely of a stream of photographs from around the world, with no text until the very end. Here’s a look at some of its images.

All photographs by Paolo Pellegrin/courtesy Yolanda Cuomo Design.

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